Newton's first law of physics, as translated from its original Latin, is: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.
I learned this rule from an episode of 3-2-1 Contact sometime in the mid-80's in its pre-school derivation of: An object in motion tends to remain in motion, and an object at rest tends to remain at rest. In physics this law pertains to inertia, but its application to how people establishing an exercise routine define "momentum" is uncanny.
The impact of momentum is amazing. When it's working in your favor it drives you to go further and faster than you thought possible; but, when you've lost it, it seems like the steps to even get out the door are insurmountable. After securing my guaranteed entry into the 2012 New York City Marathon last October I spent a good seven months generally at rest. My running dropped off to the point where it could be most generously described as sporadic. I didn't even have any sort of regular exercise routine and averaged, at best, two workouts per week. In that time I was a wee bit foolish and ran two half marathons and a 10k completely untrained and, thankfully, did not injured myself.
The impact of momentum is amazing. When it's working in your favor it drives you to go further and faster than you thought possible; but, when you've lost it, it seems like the steps to even get out the door are insurmountable. After securing my guaranteed entry into the 2012 New York City Marathon last October I spent a good seven months generally at rest. My running dropped off to the point where it could be most generously described as sporadic. I didn't even have any sort of regular exercise routine and averaged, at best, two workouts per week. In that time I was a wee bit foolish and ran two half marathons and a 10k completely untrained and, thankfully, did not injured myself.
When I started racing I started very strong, knocking out a 15k in 8:27 minutes per mile after just six weeks of consistent running and really not feeling like I ever pushed myself during the race. My 10k PR that season came in at 50:49 and 8:11 minutes per mile after taking a month-long break from running, surprising considering I walked half a mile of the race due to improper rest stop planning.
Needless to say, seven months of rest did not do much to maintain those times and my paces have suffered. I could choose to look at the decline in my paces and criticize myself for letting it go, but I think that would be completely unproductive. I'm choosing, instead, to look at it as a positive. In only six weeks of consistent training, I got that far.
In 103 days I will be running the ING NYC Marathon, a fact that the ticker on the New York Road Runners website will not let me forget. That's about 15 weeks. That's two and a half times as long as it took to get me to an 8:27 m/m 15k. If the logic behind Runner's World's race time equivalent calculator is sound, that pace would predict for me a 3:59:25 marathon.
So, I've got 15 weeks, a month of reasonably consistent training behind me, and a week-old 10k pace that predicts a 04:01:00 marathon. I'm thinking that between now and November 4th, if I can harness the momentum I've gathered in the past month, I can not only finish this marathon strong but can get myself respectably below the 4 hour mark.
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare." -Juma Ikangaa, 1989 NYC Marathon Winner
